USS Watts (DD-567) was a destroyer of the Fletcher class in the United States Navy. She was launched on 31 December 1943 and commissioned on 29 April 1944.
Her name recalled John Watts, a merchant captain whose working years ran from the close of the eighteenth century into the early nineteenth. He was probably born about 1778. Virginia is the most plausible birthplace, though that detail was never pinned down.
By 1799 he was master of Planter, an armed merchant ship with eighteen guns and a crew of forty-three. On 10 July that year, out in the eastern Atlantic, Planter fell in with a French privateer mounting twenty-two guns. The meeting belonged to the Quasi-War. For five hours Watts's men turned aside two strong attempts to capture their ship, even though the French vessel had the heavier armament. London's Lloyd's Coffee House, the concern that grew into the insurer Lloyd's of London, answered the defense with a handsome reward for Watts and his crew.
After that fight he is thought to have gone on carrying cargo. His life stayed in the merchant trade. He died in 1823, and the place of his death was never established.
Command of the destroyer opened with Joseph Benedict Maher, captain from the commissioning day of 29 April 1944 until 27 January 1945. Charles Samuel Hart followed him and remained until 23 December 1945. On that date James Francis Maynard became captain. Watts survived the war. The hull was sold for scrap on 5 September 1974.